Melting Chains
by Ezzaria26
Summary: It was all based on mistakes that drew them away from Fate's plan, on misconceptions that tore them apart. Because of this, the chains began to grow. Can the chains melt away? It's all based on a love a girl had for a boy.


**After writing a depressing Haruhi and Hikaru fanfiction where they didn't get a happy ending, I have returned to write my readers a more reassuring ending. This is not a continuation of ****Girl 169****, as you will soon find out in the first five or so sentences. Hopefully you'll like this not-so-saddening fanfic.**

**Disclaimer- I do not own Ouran. I bet you guessed that though.**

"Fujioka Haruhi. Age 37. Prime of life 16. Gender female. Parents dead. Only Child. No children. Married once. Former occupation had been a lawyer working for Sakura Law Firm. Accepted into Heaven. Died April 5 at fifteen hours, twenty-eight minutes, and thirty-four seconds while in the hospital due to blood loss. Former spouse Bykiro Zanori who is age 39, male, and alive," a woman recited, not even having to look off a paper or list.

_The life I had… Ever since graduation I'd discovered that my hands were not so free as previously believed. Instead, large steel cuffs had formed. My eyes had widened in horror. What were these? When had they appeared?_

She stared at me intently with transparent irises, so that only their outline and the pupil in the center showed. With a pale hand she swept aside some of her white bangs, though the rest was thrown into an artfully messy bun to keep it out of her heart-shaped face. All the "staff" here appeared to have the same hair, eyes and skin color as this lady, as well as a similar outfit. Females here wore white tank tops, silver gloves, and flowing, dark blue skirts of varying lengths. Males wore white, button-up shirts, gold gloves, and faded blue jeans. "Is this you?"

I was broken out of my thoughts by the "employee" who was speaking to me. I quickly replayed what she said, then nodded. "Yes," I agreed, my plain brown eyes glancing at my hands folded in my lap. At the moment my body resembled that of a sixteen-year-old me, with slightly curly, dark brown locks reaching my shoulders. If I remembered correctly though, my hair had been cut short due to the fact that bubblegum had gotten stuck in it. So why was my hair long in Heaven? I wore a stylish set of clothes that seemed recognizable. From where I wasn't quite sure, but they were dark denim skinny jeans, with a light pink, flowing, off the shoulder shirt with sleeves that pooled around my elbows and a hem that clung to my middle, revealing a bit of my stomach. There was even a silver locket hanging around my neck in the shape of a heart, though I couldn't open it.

Oddly enough, everyone around me who wasn't an angel, previously mentioned as an "employee", had one as well. They were all dead like me, and just as lucky. We had been chosen to go to heaven out of all the souls that had sat restlessly in The Waiting Room, pacing while The Judge decided where they went.

The woman nodded. "Alright. Well, WWB would like to see you Fujioka-san, so if you could please follow me," she said, turning to lead me somewhere out of this large, sterile room filled with other soon-to-be Heaven residents.

"WWB?" I inquired, not sure whether it'd be wise to follow her, even if this was Heaven.

She chuckled. "It's perfectly fine to be curious, but do not worry. It's just the White Wing Boss. WWB rules here. You have nothing to fear in WWB's presence. It is simply a proposition," she assured me.

Sighing, I stood. The White Wing Boss… So that's how this all was run. They were the angels who worked for the White Wing Boss. That meant that they had wings like their angels no doubt. But to be known specifically for them… I followed her towards the front desk where souls signed in before wandering out in wait to be assigned to a place in Heaven or summoned by an angel. In the blank wall, a door materialized, a shiny metal one. It opened without anyone touching it, and the angel proceeded to lead me into a long hallway, smiling faintly. I watched her wings with interest, small yet efficient in the ways of operating no doubt. They had about a six foot wing span, but angels probably weighed as much as clouds, being rather celestial beings themselves. They wouldn't need that large of wings.

But the White Wing Boss… That was probably far different.

I looked around my surroundings, noting the many unmarked doors that lead to who-knows-where. There was no one here except for the lady angel and me, and the walls seemed to be closing in on me. It was as if I was confined. Was I? Was Heaven like jail? No… Heaven wouldn't be like that, right…?

_Overtime, I made choices. I went to lawyer school, and all my friends from the Host Club went their separate ways. I got a new boyfriend named Zanori. Walking around seemed so effortless. But was it? No. Slowly but surely, chain links were being forged onto my cuffs. When Zanori proposed, the twenty-sixth one had been completed and added to the ends of my cuffs. When I accepted, the twenty-seventh one was beginning to be forged._

Eventually the angel started to guide me up a grand, marble staircase. This ended at a large hall. I saw a glimmer of different colors seen in the rainbow, and realized a mystical wall stood between the giant room and the two of us. But the woman swept it aside and we entered. Not a wall. A curtain. A veil that kept all impure things out.

No doubt the figure at the end of the room, standing before giant windows that allowed divine light to stream through, was the White Wing Boss. Though they faced away from me, it only made the size of their wings all the more clear. They were around six and a half feet tall, and to go with that were wings complete with a forty foot span. The person or being glowed brilliantly, practically blinding me. But I forced myself to look. They had called me for a reason. To look away now would make me lose progress, and a chance at something possibly wonderful. At the time, I had no idea how wonderful their (1) proposition was.

"Haruhi." The voice was a woman's, warm and inviting, gentle and motherly. The figure turned, revealing a pale, fragile looking woman with blindingly white hair that fell to her hips, and eyes the brightest blue imaginable. She smiled at me, picking up the folds of her flowing silver dress and fully facing me. As if a butterfly drawn to the moth, I walked towards her. I stopped three feet away from me, and she reached forth with cupped hands. Water shimmered against her palms, not seeping through her palms like it would've had it been normal water, had she been mortal. "I have something to show you." I watched intently, my eyes never straying from the water as it rippled. Slowly, it began to reveal a fiery red head, the hair pulled back into a small ponytail at the nape of the man's neck with his bangs falling in his eyes as he tiredly sketched on a large pad of paper. His hands were clothed in leather gloves, keeping his hands from aching too bad.

His golden eyes were weary, and I frowned. He seemed so ill, so unhealthy.

Then a woman with flowing, curly, caramel locks entered, bright blue-green eyes shining as she came up behind him. She saw him working and her eyes softened before she wrapped her arms around his neck and nuzzled her nose into the top of his head.

He looked downward, frowning, though she couldn't see. He spoke something that I couldn't determine. His lips moved too fast for me to understand.

She checked a calendar hanging on the far wall and then nodded sympathetically it would seem, kissing his forehead and giving him a cup of coffee before leaving and closing the door softly behind him. He didn't watch her leave. The coffee never even received a second glance. It was supposed to be a simple loving gesture, something to get her affection for him across. But what point was there to that if he didn't even look at it? Didn't stop to consider drinking its contents?

I arched my eyebrows at this. "Why did she look at the calendar?" I inquired.

The White Wing Boss frowned, then swirled the water a bit. The view began to change, moving in on the drawing the man I knew so well was working on. There was a roughly sketched model, as he was known to do before designing the clothes themselves. The model looked eerily like myself. (2) The model was wearing a knee-length, loose black skirt and light purple tank top with a denim jacket thrown over it. A purple flower was in her short brown hair. "I wore that outfit once, didn't I?"

Her frown deepened. "Do you know the date?" she asked. I shook my head.

"It's only been a couple days since I died, right? So, April 8 or so," I reasoned.

"Time has passed faster than you were aware it did, Fujioka Haruhi. It's been a year. Time won't pass so fast now that you are in heaven instead of in The Waiting Room, in fact now that you're here it will go unbearably slow, but you need to know anyway. (3) It's May 21," she corrected easily.

My face paled. Oh… Oh. _Oh_. "Hikaru," I whispered, reaching towards her hand as if I was to caress his stressed face, his troubled brow. But he wasn't there.

"My sister was rather disappointed that you two had the power to go against her plans. It was not only unexpected, but it threw off much of her other lives and paths," the goddess informed me.

I blinked. What was she talking about?

She let the water slide through her fingers, falling onto the ground and vanishing as if it never existed, as if it was now one with the wooden flooring. "My sister is Fate herself. Do you know that she had made your two ribbons and tied them a century before your parents even met? That's how much she knew you had to be together," the woman informed me.

"Ribbon?" I asked, trying not to be overly curious and thus rude.

She snapped her fingers. Two white ribbons appeared. "All lives start out pure and harmless, no sins attached and no regrets. So everyone's life is a ribbon, simple and white. But the more sins they commit, the more torn and frayed their ribbon. The more in love they become, the deeper red. The more evil, the thinner the ribbon. It's a simple concept. Fate is known to make her decisions as to how frayed or black they will be when their lives start. She's organized. She plans their gender, name, family, soul mate and length ahead of time. But on their birth is when she chooses their purity and love level," she began to explain. "But you two… You were a special case. She dyed your ribbons deep red before hand, she tied you two together so tightly it was supposed to be impossible for anything to change. Fate is also known not to ever let anyone mess up her ribbons. Especially the ones who are the ribbons. But something happened that she didn't expect. One may think that your ribbons had faded out of the deep, passionate red they were. That's why you two fell apart so quickly. That's why you two never wed as she had planned."

I stared at her, trying to soak in what she was telling me. _You two? As in me and Hikaru?_

"But in fact, it was quite the opposite. You two loved each other so much, that you undid the knot. Both of you didn't want to hurt the other, thought the other loved someone else, and only wanted them to have happiness. So you gave them up. That's love right there. You two created a different color on your own. Instead, you got the bad end of the deal. You were convinced he loved this other woman, Mayhiro Toukai, correct? She loved him, and she was the only one who could keep him quiet and not cause any mischief. This may have seemed good, but it isn't. Hikaru hasn't been himself in a while. Though they're married, he has hidden himself now," she told me.

I thought back to that day.

_I had let him go. The look in her eyes could not be any purer. That had to be love. What else could it be? Accepting that no one could love Hikaru more than her, except me, started something. Deciding that he'd be happier with her made the chains just a bit heavier._

She nodded, recognizing the flashes of memory in my eyes. It was odd that she was so observant, so aware of people's thoughts and emotions. "And you… Well you just wanted to drown out all the pain. You wanted him to forget you so he could live the life he needed to live, had to live to be happy, right? But it isn't so easy. You were so attached to him. The only way to get out of his life was to find someone else and fully immerse yourself in them. Zanori… He wasn't destined for love. He is not good with intimacy. As a best friend, he would never have turned to beat you. But you couldn't keep him at arm's length. He'd be easy to be with. Simple, fun, _distracting_. You wouldn't have to think of Hikaru and hurt yourself more. Zanori wouldn't ask too much of you," she explained, understanding my thinking at the time instantly. Was my face so easy to read? Was I just an open book? "He thought he could handle it too. His parents and their divorce had been hard on him, but he could take anything on. Wrong. Gaining a lover means losing a friend. That friend was you. You changed, Haruhi. Hikaru changed. You two were doomed. Fate noticed your ribbon becoming frayed. Zanori was beating you. He had succumbed to his worst fears, because he hadn't built up the strong will quite yet. And here you are today."

A couple tears fell down my cheeks. Did she have to bring up my mistakes? I knew there were flaws? What did that mean? There was nothing anyone could do about them.

"Hikaru is releasing a clothing chain called (4) Eternal Spring, named after you of course. He'll live another thirty years, and die in his sleep dreaming of you, with Fate being the hopeless romantic. And that's how he'll get you. After thirty years, I can't imagine prolonging your reunion any longer. Fate won't let me anyway," she said, pulling out a flower.

It was the purple flower that had been in my hair in Hikaru's drawing.

She handed it to me, and I instantly knew what had to be done with such a flower. I was escorted out of the room, my heart feeling lighter.

_Driving to the graveyard that day, my heart felt lighter. Hikaru was free. I had another love… right? And soon my parents would hear my great news. It was pretty great, wasn't it? Yes, of course it was. I got out of the car after parking, heading towards their grave stones. When I got there, tears pricked my large eyes. They would've liked Hikaru too, though. I knew my father had had a soft spot for him. But I was getting married now. That's all there was to it. It'd been a month. Now was the time to tell them. The heaviest of the chain links was beginning to form, weighing me down as I walked back to my car afterwards, planning to get home, eat dinner, and sleep. Such simple plans that would soon be a rare luxury. I didn't know though._

The hourglass tipped so slowly it was nearly unbearable. The sand was like a large slug trying to drag a mountain behind it. Didn't the thing ever fall all the way to the bottom.

But I couldn't let that distract me from my work. I reached out my hand and began to make complicated loops and turns, designing a tree. It would be a beautiful tree, with cherry blossoms that fell often, littering the ground with the fairest of pink flowers. My vision was a challenging one. I was still new at this after all, but I was determined. The place was going to look perfect. The place was for us.

Years passed slowly. The White Wing Boss had not been exaggerating. Thirty years? Or thirty centuries? Which was it? Seconds were hours, minutes were days, hours were months. Why was everything going so slowly in this supposedly perfect world?

But after what felt like forever, an unexpected visitor came. I turned to discover a girl standing with her feet planted firmly apart. She looked no older than fourteen or fifteen, about five and a half feet tall, and had flowing ebony hair with some of the brightest blue eyes I'd ever seen.

Just like the White Wing Boss. "Who are you?" I inquired.

She withdrew two ribbons, dyed such a deep shade of red it had to be a different color. But what color could it be? "Fate," she answered with a soft, satisfied smile. " (5) In one day, my vision will come true."

With a sweep of her silver cloak, she vanished, leaving behind the long ribbons, though one was much longer than the other. I scowled. That shorter one was mine.

That's how the system worked, right?

Not quite knowing what she was talking about, I continued working, though eventually I fell asleep under my newest creation.

And I awoke to voices. "She's waited thirty years for you and longer," was all the warning I was given. And I realized I was wearing a knee length black skirt that hung around my knees loosely, barely gracing my skin. With that was a purple tank top modestly cut, and over that was a denim jacket. The jacket was rolled up to my elbows and cut off a couple inches above my waist. The only thing missing from the ever so familiar and memorable outfit was the purple flower.

But there wasn't time to worry about it. He entered within moments.

_By the time I had died, I had practically been chained to the walls surrounding me, to Zanori, and it brought me down. It was too great of a burden for me, too heavy to lift and deal with. I grew depressed quickly. At the time, there was no way to rid myself of the chains. But now, there was definitely a fire kindling itself._

My heart beat noticeably quicker, racing inside of me. My eyes widened, and a small smile graced my lips. Was it him? Or was I dreaming? He stood there, shocked, golden eyes wide. He wore jeans and a white hoodie with the sleeves cut off, as well as large head phones around his neck. That outfit… I smiled. It was the outfit he had worn the day he had taken me on the date so many years ago. Just like me, he looked no older than sixteen, still the sexy beast he had been in high school back at Ouran. That must've been the prime of his life as well. I'd never seen him look so damn happy in my life.

"Haruhi?" he gasped. Joy flooded through my body. That was his voice. His irresistable voice. My response was out of my countrol. Without even thinking about it, I instantly ran to him and tackled him to the ground, wrapping my arms around his neck. I could feel his face heat up, and when I looked his face was bright red. Yes. It was him. It was really him. Only Hikaru... For all these years, that'd been all I had wanted. Was I finally getting it? Was I finally getting my one true dream?

"Hikaru," I murmured, laughing and holding onto him tighter.

He closed his eyes, wrapping his arms around my waist and pulling me closer to him as we lay in the grass. "I thought I'd never see you again," he whispered.

"And I thought it'd take you forever. It sure felt like it did," I informed him, pulling back to look at him before rolling off and sitting there. I stared at his face curiously, trying to memorize it over and over again, every feature including the slope of his nose and the shade of his skin, the width of his eyebrows and the color of his eyes.

Hikaru grinned, standing up. After becoming steady on his own footing, he offered me a hand, which I grabbed. Then he hauled me up, and I smiled at him. Hikaru then looked around, admiring the world around him. "This is amazing," he commented, gesturing to the trees and rivers I'd made in the thirty years with that one purple flower I had been given.

"It took almost as long as it did for you to get here," I said.

Hikaru stared at me in shock. "You made all this?" he inquired disbelievingly. I nodded and he shook his head in wonder. "Damn… You never… I mean… Wow, Haruhi." I did nothing but stare, still trying to make sure he was real. Finally, he sighed. "Would you… um… Wanna go for a walk?" he asked. I nodded, and since we still held hands, we walked around peacefully as he blushed.

Eventually, we told each other everything. What happened, how things should've gone, about Heaven, about ourselves, and everything else we could possibly think of. Eventually, we arrived in front of my favorite part of the whole place. It was a large, beautiful tree with purple flowers blossoming in its branches. We sat down and leaned against it, still talking and talking as if we'd never see each other again. Hikaru had to prolong the moment. I had to try and savor every single second, since I hadn't been able to in real life.

"Haruhi…" he began, inhaling deeply. He turned to me. "Ever since I met you… I… I… Agh! It was so simple back then! Why can't I say the damn words now? It's just… Well shit, none of this makes fucking sense, but I don't care because… I don't know! This is just so… You made me a better man than I was, Haruhi. It broke my heart that I went with her instead of you, but Haruhi, you gotta believe me, I thought of you every day." Hikaru began to panic, breaking out into a sweat.

I put a finger to his lips, effectively quieting him and his random babblings. "Shh… I know, Hikaru. I know," and with that, I pressed my lips to his. He put one hand around my waist and the other tangled itself into my longer hair.

"I'm never letting you go again, you know," he told me, pulling back.

I grinned. "I know. It's one of the reasons I love you, Hitachiin Hikaru," I informed him, kissing him again. As I moved my lips against him in the silence, something made its presence known. Click! Click! We pulled away to look downward, where our lockets had opened upon their own accord. Mine revealed a devilish face, a picture of Hikaru, grinning and laughing at something he found absolutely hilarious. On the opposite side of the locket, in beautiful, elegant script, it read 'Hitachiin Hikaru, The protector from the thunder.' I blushed lightly, remembering that night at the church where the thunder had roared mercilessly. Hikaru's showed a picture of me, looking at the camera curiously. My hair was short, and if you looked closely, you could see the straps to my dress, plain and white. I had worn that very dress to the ball the Host Club had decided to hold. On the opposite side in more of a scrawl it read 'Fujioka Haruhi, The one who could tell me apart.' He stared down it, eyes widening, before risking a glance at me. A slight blush rose to his face, tinting his cheeks pink.

"Love you too," he responded, breathless, smiling like the idiot he was.

I rolled my brown eyes, ruffling his hair. " (6) Baka," I mumbled, leaning against his chest. Slowly but surely, I felt something sliding into my hair. I looked up at him, curious as to what he had tucked behind my ear. Hikaru held up a replica, a simple purple flower. The exact same flower he had drawn me in thirty years ago. He must've noticed my outfit.

"That's all the outfit was missing," he explained impishly, pulling me into a kiss once more.

_The fire was fully lit, and the chains were slowly burning. They began to break off and shrivel into nothingness, leaving me weightless. I reached upward, and a hand grasped onto mine, pulling me back upwards into the blue abyss that was the sky. My wings grew, and I glanced over at the golden-eyed, red-haired man I'd fallen for. In our hands we grasped two ribbons, tied securely together over and over and over again._

_In the clouds stood Fate, hands twisting the chains until they broke just like before, a satisfied smile on her lips. _

"There was something missing in me too," I told him, kissing him.

"What as that?" he asked, leaning back to look me in the eyes.

I laughed softly. "Everything. _You_," I told him, pressing my lips to his, determined to leave him breathless.

_And I felt the chains permanently melt away._

**I wanted to end this one on a happy note, considering my last one, Girl 169. That one was depressing and we all knew it. So this one was happier. This was part of my original angel idea, but I don't have the patience to write the original idea. **

**1. The proposition, if I didn't make it obvious, was made by the WWB when she gave Haruhi the flower. It gave her the ability to create a world for Hikaru and herself. She was suggesting that this time, Haruhi took her chance and didn't let Hikaru slip away.**

**2. I decided that in this story, Haruhi eventually revealed her gender. Ouran allowed them to wear their outfit of choice to graduation, and so she wore this outfit, which Hikaru told her she looked beautiful in. Haruhi, unconciously, wore that outfit a lot afterwards.**

**3. May 21 was the graduation day itself. It probably isn't accurate with Japanese schools, but I'm not Japanese, so I've got no idea.**

**4. 'Eternal Spring' is named after Haruhi because Haruhi means something along the lines of Spring Day. **

**5. Fate never did get the romantic, sweet relationship she wanted between Haruhi and Hikaru, so since he was coming the next day, she was simply hinting that her plan was finally becoming true.**

**6. 'Baka' if you weren't aware, means 'empty-headed fool' or, more simply and bluntly put, 'idiot'.**

**So here you go. Hope you enjoyed. Please review!**

**Ezzy**


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